LANDING PAGE – THE COMPLETE SKETCH

1. LANDING PAGE – THE COMPLETE SKETCH What is a Landing page? A landing page is an individual web page that offers comprehensive knowledge to visitors about services and leads them to the next step i.e. conversion. The landing page is an entry point to a website. All the efforts made by marketing campaigns and advertises online is to bring audience to this page. What happens next solely depends on how good the landing page is and how well it is presented to visitors. The first impressions are very important and can often go a long way in sealing the deal. Whenever a client is brought to the website either through the search engines or orchestrated manually, the first thing he encounters is the landing page. If the client is not impressed by the setup, there is a high chance that he quits and probably never returns. A landing page can really be termed as an extension of advertising campaign, search result or a link. The single and foremost objective of a landing is to generate leads. It comprises key information and a way in which he can get in touch with the organization be it phone numbers, email addresses or simply a click of the button. This click of the button is the Call to Action (CTA) button. It is effectively one touch that turns a visitor into a lead or even a customer. The landing pages go hand in hand with social media marketing, email campaigns and search engines as in these platforms bring more traffic than any other. Inquiry Forms also have a place in landing pages. They can act as a template for getting key information from the customers such as emails and phone numbers. The landing page has links that guides a visitor straight through to shopping cart or a retail page where conversions happen. All the information present on the landing page is relevant to the visitor. It may comprise of text, images, links any other dynamic elements. A Transactional landing page is employed to entice customers into completing a transaction. Inquiry forms can be deployed asking the customers to fill them. Thus the visitor’s email address or phone number is obtained. These can be used to place him in the mailing lists or directly contact, either way, you get a chance to convey the message across. The important thing is to extract as much information as possible which in turn can leads the visitor into a customer. A typical landing page consists of short and precise headings putting forward the essential information placing emphasis on the visual media. Short videos or animations can also be included if relevancy permits and with the rapid growth of social media, some of the icons are also thrown in there for sharing purpose. Often people get confused between a landing page and a normal regulation webpage. Let’s clear the air. For starters, just because a visitor lands on one of your many web pages don’t make it a landing page. A landing page as aforementioned consists of forms and only exists for the sole purpose of capturing visitors’ information, building leads in an attempt to turn them into customers. In simpler terms, every landing page is a web page but not every web page is a landing page. Landing pages are used to facilitate all the other web pages with a foundation by bringing in leads so that they perform to their optimum. What you give is what you get

2. Sometimes to lure something from clients, you must be prepared to let go of something from your end. It’s not always going to be plain sailing where in an ideal world you get everything you want from the visitors with nothing going the other way but, this is not the ideal world. The visitors show interest when there is something at stake, something that’s useful to them. I’m in no way suggesting give valuable stuff away for free. Nobody does that. Instead, lull them into the ecosystem by giving a taste of it. For instance, give them a guide and ‘how to use’ if they fill in the form. The clients of course, give away their information as they are getting free stuff. This also makes the visitor come back for more. It’s an effective strategy wherein you are not actually giving anything away for free but the customer goes home happy and on top of that you are basically advertising your business. So in this case, what you get is more than what you give. Landing page vs Homepage Any homepage that has forms doesn’t come under landing page because of the fact that a homepage simply has a multiple number of tasks to perform besides building leads. Consider an example where your business is about selling shoes. You advertise all over the internet about the different kinds of shoes you are selling and when a client clicks on one of the shoe categories, he wants to see those shoes alone not all of them clubbed together. This is where the landing page comes in handy for you, a homepage cannot act as a landing page for the very fact that, it simply has to do more. • homepage acts as representation to the whole of the website. The landing page can be optimized and tailored to fit a keyword but that doesn’t happen with a website. A landing page is more relevant to the search query whereas the • to-action button is designed for the sole purpose to increase conversions. On the other hand, the homepage has to put up with distractions like menus, pop-ups, navigation etc. The landing page also has the edge when it comes to conversion. The call- What is the importance of a landing page? You have put all the hard yards in by creating the brand and building a website but how does that translate into numbers? The answer is an effective lead conversion tool. A landing page is one of the premium tools around. The first impressions are important and they are all the more vital when it comes to the landing page as the customer may only stay for a bit. It makes the job of a visitor easy by conveying a single message and that single message is most probably the only message he is looking for. When the client makes a visit to the site be it through social media, search engine or any marketing campaign, he is looking for the thing he clicked for. When you fail to deliver that, he doesn’t bother looking deeper. Landing page helps in decision making. When you flood the timeline with an umpteen number of choices, you are giving the customer too much to think. Therein lies the danger of hounding him away to some other website where he finds the job easier. So, make him do as little as possible. If he came for fruits, give him fruits. Too much information is not good. When you are giving him so

3. much to choose from, there is a great danger that he might get distracted and might not follow up on what he originally came for. A good landing page will increase the conversion rates to no end. It doesn’t just confine to that, a landing page enables you to determine what your clients prefer and what choices they make. It can also act as a point of contact between the enterprise and the customers. The landing page can immensely contribute to lead building. The organization can offer exclusive articles, guidelines or even discounts in exchange for the all-important information the client can offer. This can be used by the marketing team further down the line to get in contact and streamline them. By employing a software called CRM (Customer Relationship Management), you can now track the activities of the customers beginning from where they came from i.e. social media, search engine or marketing campaigns. If the customer goes through with the transaction on your site, the software will then associate the customer’s information with their path through your site. This will now open up opportunities to go through everything the customer does, knowing their preferences and tastes. This will, in turn, help you to tailor your website based on the target audience and the preferences. But most importantly, you get to know who your customers really are allowing you to build strong relationships and loyalty. On the flip side of the coin, if many customers exit the website at a certain page, it indicates that the page is not strong enough and doesn’t really have the pull. So, it’s time to get rid. When it comes to advertising and AdWords, they can only guarantee you one click and if you’re redirecting the visitor to some other page, he might shy away. All the money you spend ad the efforts you put in can only be capitalized if you turn visitors into leads and leads into customers. The landing page doesn’t just do this, it can also help you reduce the bounce rate. ` Above all, the landing page offers clarity of thought through its incisive design forcing the visitors to make decisions. It makes the customer see through the information providing contact details, downloads and what not. It will let you know who the real customers are, who have the potential to be and who is not worth the time. How do you improve a landing page? Although the landing page construction and implementation seems simple and straight forward, not everybody can crack it. So the big question is how do you up the game? Well, there are many ways in which you can get the job done but, the principles remain the same. Headlines: A headline can make or break your page. Many people when they visit a page are only looking for the headlines. This is because the headlines are not catchy enough or they lack that extra little bit of spark which will make the difference. According to a recent survey, 8 out of an average 10 people read the headlines while only 2 people go on to read the content below. Consistency: Maintain consistency throughout the page, try and replicate the key information from homepage. The statistics you provide should be nigh on perfect and consistent throughout all the pages. If you say you have facilitated 25,000 people on your homepage and increase that count  

4. by 5,000 on landing page, clients will not know what to believe and that causes a confusion. Test other cases: If your landing page isn’t creating much hype or isn’t pulling any visitors, instead of lulling on it and waiting for things to happen, be proactive and try out what else would work. I’m not suggesting to make wholesome changes overnight, what I’m saying is to introduce different strategies. Give it a go. If you are going to go down, go down swinging. A sense of urgency: Don’t be laid back, good things don’t come to those who wait. Drive your landing page by instilling a sense of urgency. A simple tactic like giving away informative stuff like guides and manuals for a limited period of time could do wonders for the enterprise. Sell the strategy by employing headlines like “First 50 to sign up will get a free user guide”. Guide the visitors: Often a visitor lands on your page and doesn’t know where to go next. This is due to lack of proper guidance. Deployment of call-to-action buttons or simple arrows in some cases can do the job. Tell the client where to go next, tell him what to do, shed light upon it. Proper guidance and direction can see an increase in conversion numbers. The engagement automatically increases. The important thing is to acknowledge the fact that there will be some customers who simply do not like any interference. So to cope with this, ask the customers if they want the directional cues. If it’s their first time, there is a higher chance they might say yes. The choice is theirs to make. Carry relevancy: A simple yet important aspect of any landing page is that, what you present in the landing page must and should match with the promises you laid out in the ads. Don’t make claims and not follow up, it makes you look weak and incompetent. Carry relevancy throughout the page and replicate the words you put out on the website and the ads. This might seem very simple but, it is one of the more important things you could do. Imagine a client clicks on the ad of a water bottle and lands on the page only to discover it is of a lunch box. He simply quits and never even entertains the thought of coming back. Change the layout: Your content is ace. Your promotions are good. But there is no end product. What could be the problem? No matter how good the content is or how unique the banners are, without a good interface, it is going to fetch nothing. Try optimizing the page layout, sit down with a team of experts and tell them how exactly your business is working out. The strong points and the weak, they’ll come up with a solution that best suits the vision you have.      So all in all, the importance of a landing page to any business in terms of lead building and conversion rates cannot be undermined. When done right, landing page helps your business in more than one way. It can act as a gateway to further significant steps in the customer / organization relationship. With appropriate use of forms and call to action button, one can lull the clients into transactions and further participation. Landing page can provide proper guidance and direction which some of the clients may need.

5. www.sanbrains.com